‘All that’s sacred is the ambition. The writing can always, always, always be improved.’

‘Before you cast a critical eye over your own work (not a negative eye, but an appraising one), one thing that can help is to set the work aside for a time – a day, a week, a month. This can give you some separation from the work and provide some useful perspective.’

‘Sometimes the most important and impactful of things are said in a quiet, controlled and thoughtful voice.’

‘We need to be open to feedback and willing to make changes while also staying true to the story we want to tell. It can be a fine line but one worth walking to create a novel or non-fiction work readers will not be able to put down.’

‘There is no rule that says “this is the end of draft 1 and the beginning of draft 2”. Your work can and will progress uniquely to you…You can move on whenever you feel like it. Sometimes a fresh start is exactly what a manuscript needs.’

‘Writing a novel is like flying a 747, with plenty of time for take-off, flight and landing. Writing a short story is like trying to get a plane off the ground as you are in the process of building it. It teaches a writer all kinds of skills.’

‘I have always been open to feedback, even if it hurts my creative pride. I know that somewhere in it is either a ‘gem’ I can use, or it can trigger my inner critique to emerge and see the manuscript with a different lens.’

“We’re still not seeing enough First Nations stories written by our First Nations peoples; we’re still not getting enough Own Voices stories or intersectional stories in Australian published fiction.”

“I think the biggest is to believe that writing a short story is just like writing a chapter from a novel; nothing could be further from the truth.” Ryan O’Neill gives us insight into writing short stories.